Why go out? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why go out?

#91

Post by kahawe » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 11:14 AM UTC

dtbx wrote: post #21

I think she is a little bit neurotic, and she missed all the evolutionary stuff - that we are hardwired for social interaction. I live an overly solitary life, and I crave for company. My social circle is nearly empty, no GF, and almost all my friends have moved to other cities, so I have just one close friend. Damn, I need to go out. I need more human contact, not less.

> I live an overly solitary life, and I crave for company. My social circle is nearly empty, no GF, and almost all my friends have moved to other cities, so I have just one close friend. Damn, I need to go out. I need more human contact, not less.

The difference is: even though she makes it seem like being alone might be desirable she then twists it in the end; in my opinion she is clearly a VERY social person with healthy relationships and a suitable amount of casual sex and lots of friends. She is coming from the other end of the spectrum, looking in the direction of loneliness with a sort-of "greener pastures" attitude. I would guess she is probably so very social and has SO many friends and hookups that a little vacation from all that stress of handling THAT many people is all this was about.

You, and me too unfortunately, sound like you are coming from the other end of that spectrum...

Therefore, from that perspective this article feels mean or ungrateful when you look at it like that - first world sort-of complaining about having too many friends and casual sex.

Re: Why go out?

#92

Post by bgilroy26 » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 11:15 AM UTC

WiseWeasel wrote: post #68

haberman wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But let me assure you, this conceptual poet was digging his nails into my heart—he knew it, and, five minutes later, I suddenly felt it too—which led to a week and a half of fuming in bed, unable to sleep, my declaring this man my enemy, the reconceiving of a magazine article I was writing in such a way as to include a subtextual layer that would annihilate conceptual poetics, a week and a half of going out every ni…

I dunno, I read it as her just being dramatic for effect, but you could be right. I am skeptical that someone truly this anxious would willingly share such intimate thoughts with us.

I think of "sharing your thought process directly" as being a major facet of anxiety, a la Notes from Underground --Fyodor Dostoevsky

Re: Why go out?

#93

Post by bgilroy26 » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 11:20 AM UTC

piaskal wrote: post #83

Swizec wrote: post #18

"Never mind, I replied, turning the key, for my curiosity surpassed my fear." And with that the author sums it up for me. I'm curious. I want to know. So I go out.

It's so easy to access all kinds of information from home nowadays, it can be better at fulfilling my curiosity than going out.

I think that is a key problem in the Internet age. I would argue that cigarettes were so powerful because they make social interaction easier.

The Internet brings the cost of social interaction -- communion -- far lower than cigarettes ever did.

Because it is so valuable to so many people, lowering the cost of communing can incentives some terrible things by accident.

Re: Why go out?

#94

Post by okamiueru » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 11:36 AM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #43

saraid216 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We bin people like that because, before the bins, we just assumed there was one and that people who weren't in it were bad. Now we know there are two, and people might simply be in a different "good" rather than out in the "bad".

Well, enough of that. Here's a new theory: There are no bins, there's a continuum of behaviours, and there's no good or bad.

I think, (and I'm being presumptuous here), everyone knows there are no true 'bins', and that people are complicated, and every characteristic is from in a continuous metric, and there is no good or bad.

I also think that this is why bins are used. It's not an attempt at correctly describing people, but rather a simplification, using general terms in order to communicate the traits in a, best-effort, meaningful way.

I could never adequately describe how I _truly_ am as a person. All I can do is draw on gross simplifications that you yourself can translate to a meaningful metric based on your own experience.

Re: Why go out?

#95

Post by bgilroy26 » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 11:40 AM UTC

mhartl wrote: post #15

cpfohl wrote: post #3

What a horribly sad way to live your life. People are no addiction, they're a necessary (and awesome) part of life. Regardless of your spiritual bent: Athiesm - We evolved from social primates into other social primates. You're adding a lot of psychological stress at a fundamental level when you don't live the way you're bred. Christianity/Judaism - God made us for community. "It is not good for Man to be alone". Bud…

People differ greatly in their appetite for social interactions vs. solitude. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. —Henry David Thoreau Do you agree with Thoreau? Probably not. But some people do, and there's nothing wrong with that.

I don't think the point of the parent comment contradicts what you are saying.

Arguably those "introverted" folks tend to be the types who long for human beings to understand each other even more than "extroverted" people do.

One of Thoreau's crowning achievements was his work on non violent resistance, which in practice is aimed at precisely the same target as the wishes the parent commenter lists.

Re: Why go out?

#96

Post by StavrosK » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 11:42 AM UTC

okamiueru wrote: post #94

StavrosK wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, enough of that. Here's a new theory: There are no bins, there's a continuum of behaviours, and there's no good or bad.

I think, (and I'm being presumptuous here), everyone knows there are no true 'bins', and that people are complicated, and every characteristic is from in a continuous metric, and there is no good or bad. I also think that this is why bins are used. It's not an attempt at correctly describing people, but rather a simplification, using general terms in order to communicate the traits in a, best-effort, meaningful way.…

Sure, that makes sense, I'm just of the opinion that scales describe people a bit more accurately than bins, e.g. the Kinsey scale:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_scale

I think you're right, though, most people probably use it as a sort of description rather than a hard categorization.

Re: Why go out?

#97

Post by zikzikzik » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 1:37 PM UTC

Volpe wrote: post #67

sophacles wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are considered holy not because they aren't social, but because they are rejecting something fundamentally human in the name of $diety.

A number of schools of buddhism hold no 'diety', yet still have monks who isolate themselves.

Skim milk is diety.

Re: Why go out?

#98

Post by snapdata » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 1:38 PM UTC

shabble wrote: post #64

snapdata wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am amazed that you looked through the source code of the page. It seemed like a pretty bland/generic site to me, not worth checking out what's going on under the hood. Good find though.

Nah, I found it because I generally browse with Firefox + NoScript which disables most javascript, including the little snippet that this spamblob uses to hide itself with css. So it appeared black and bold in the middle of the page footer :)

Ahh, haha. I'm using chrome :S We have a rip off of NoScript called 'ScriptNo'

Re: Why go out?

#99

Post by icebraining » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 2:08 PM UTC

alexro wrote: post #84

icebraining wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it wasn't God who created the Universe than who did? Define "God".

God is something outside (and can be inside at the same moment) the Universe, meaning that it is something we cannot grasp. If we cannot grasp how God operates then whatever we look at is just an observation of a single event, however long we look at it. So whatever time we perceive within our Universe it may be just a single very short moment to God. Hence evolution isn't really how we interpret it - it can be compl…

So, let me replace "God" with your definition ("something outside the Universe").

If we cannot grasp how something outside the Universe operated then whatever we look at is just an observation of a single event, however long we look at it. So whatever time we perceive within our Universe it may be just a single very short moment to something outside the Universe. Hence evolution isn't really how we interpret it - it can be completely possible that how something outside the Universe creates us we perceive as evolution.

As you see, they're just completely meaningless statements. They apply just as well to George Carlin's "Big Electron" as to a random fluctuation in an energy field, and anything else we can imagine.

It's not even wrong.

Re: Why go out?

#100

Post by icebraining » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 2:28 PM UTC

ricopags wrote: post #61

ams6110 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery isn't some inevitable feature of, trade, or political systems, that one chooses or does not. I don't know if it's inevitable, but it's only been for the last couple of hundred years of human history that it was not very commonplace.

And by 'not very commonplace' do you mean 'more common than ever'? As industry has expanded, so has slavery. http://slaveryfootprint.org/

Bunch of crap. They're not slaves, they're people living in extreme poverty, to whom those jobs are the only way they have of getting out of it, and those self-righteous idiots are their worst enemy, because they're actively trying to remove their possibility of having a better life. Krugman's article explains it well: http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/smokey.html

I think C.S. Lewis' quote is completely appropriate here:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."